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Arm wrestling robots beaten by a teenaged girl
Whole article here.
Flesh and bone triumphed in the first ever man-versus-machine battle of brawn - an arm wrestling contest between robots and humans in California on Monday. The champion, beating all three robotic arms each in matter of seconds, was a 17-year-old girl called Panna Felsen, a high school student from San Diego, US. The contest was set up by Yoseph Bar-Cohen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California, US, in an attempt to encourage the development of polymer-based artificial muscles. The aim, he says, is to improve on existing actuators - or muscles - currently used in prosthetics and robots. The actuators in the three competing robotic arms belong to a class of materials known as electroactive polymers (EAP). These are plastics that can change shape when activated either electrically or with chemicals. Rest of the article here. |
While they probably ought to be stronger than a teenage girl, there is something to be said for domestic robots that aren't much stronger than humans - they'll be much safer in case of malfunction.
But for the purposes of robots designed to do risky jobs instead of humans, I think they need to beef 'em up. |
It'll come in time. That was really only a demonstrator to get people to pony up money and resources because he was able to show a working model.
All of the great sci fi fantasies will be coming to life. Muscle augmentation, battlemechs, powered armor. |
skynet, VIKI, etc...
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And allow airplane wings that flex to change shape instead of flaps and slots. :yelgreedy
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Imagine how thin some things, like wings, if the actuators can be strands of muscle instead of big motors or pumps and rams and such.
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